Nørholm made an early start in the world of music and composed his first chamber opera, 'Sneglen og Rosenhækken' ("The Snail and The Rosebush") while still a teenager. His compositional talents were honed at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen by teachers like Vagn Holmboe, and from 1961 on he also taught at the Academy, where he later became a professor.
Until 1959, Nørholm's compositions were dominated by the lyrical Nordic tone that is also evident in the works of Carl Nielsen. However, his encounter with the new European avant-garde movement in Rome in 1959 brought about a complete transformation in his musical style. Inspired by the serialism of Boulez and Stockhausen, he initiated a new, strictly ordered compositional technique, which gave rise to the first Danish serial work: Piano Trio Opus 22.
His opera 'Invitation til Skafottet' ("Invitation to a Beheading") (1965) was commissioned by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. This opera signalled the beginning of a more pluralistic approach, the philosophy of which was that all musical dogmas could be considered, and all musical material was useful. In this way several musical 'languages' could be linked together to form a whole - often with sharp contrasts.
Nørholm has achieved his greatest impact as a writer of symphonies. His 55-minute second symphony, 'Isola Bella', commissioned by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, represented an attempt to create a complete musical world. Other symphonies have a more programme-like character, such as the fourth symphony, 'Moderskabelsen'("The Mother Creation"), which deals with the genesis of human knowledge.
In recent years, Nørholm has focused increasingly on the interplay between the individual and the group, and has retained a touch of the unexpected.
By Mikkel Hauge Kofoed
